OUR SPONSORS

Former Sheriff - Harrris Cty

Adrian Garcia

Adrian Garcia the former Sheriff of Harris County, Texas. Garcia spent 23 years with the Houston Police Department, before becoming a city councilman. Garcia served six years as a Houston City Councilman, eventually becoming Mayor Pro-Tempore under former Mayor Bill White. In 2008 he became Sheriff of Harris County.

CEO - EnerVest Operating

Jud Walker

Jud was named President and CEO of EnerVest Operating Company in July 2016. Prior to that he served as Executive Vice President and COO of EnerVest Operating Company. He joined EnerVest in 2009 as Vice President of Geosciences and director of New Ventures.

Prior to joining EnerVest in 2009, he was employed with Chesapeake Energy. Jud was the lead geoscientist for multiple plays within both the Delaware and Val Verde Basins during his seven-year tenure at Chesapeake.

He is a founding member of the Next Generation Giving Circle, associated with the Greater Houston Community Foundation. Jud holds a Bachelor of Science in Geology, cum laude, from Texas Christian University and a Master of Science in Geological Sciences, summa cum laude, from The University of Texas at Austin.

CEO - Houston Tech. Center

Lori Vetters

Lori Vetters is President and CEO of the Houston Technology Center. She is a well-known and highly respected Houston business and civic leader with deep experience working with some of Houston’s major non-profit organizations. She has had substantial board experience with the Greater Houston Partnership, Teach for America and the Houston Zoo. Her extensive background in banking brings a wealth of experience in business leadership and strategy to the Houston Technology Center and to the entrepreneurial community.

Prior to joining HTC, Ms. Vetters was Senior Vice President and Regional Commercial Executive at HSBC Bank plc and has amassed more than 25 years of banking experience in Texas. Previously, Ms. Vetters served as President of her family’s Texas-based businesses, as Regional President of Houston Gulf Coast at Wachovia Corporation and as a Texas-based Managing Director at J.P. Morgan Chase and its predecessor firms.

CEO - Station Houston

John Reale

John is a Co-Founder and CEO of Station Houston. Station Houston’s mission is to connect and grow Houston’s tech innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. They serve as Houston’s tech hub, actively connecting entrepreneurs, experts, customers and investors. Station Member Companies are primarily focused on idea-stage to Series A funded software and digital startups.

John is an advisor to a number of startups, a mentor at OwlSpark and Red Labs, and Chair of the City of Houston’s Innovation and Technology Task Force.

MD - BlueVine Ventures

Kemal Farid

Kemal is an investor and a veteran technology entrepreneur in software, energy, financial, manufacturing, e-commerce and health-care products & services. For three decades, Kemal has built and invested in software, electronics, engineering, IT and services businesses with a specialization in the energy industry covering production operations, hydrocarbon accounting, exploration, drilling, reservoir management and financial services.

Kemal founded and led Merrick Systems, a leading oil and gas software company that was acquired by P2 Energy Solutions. He is currently a Managing Director at BlueVine Ventures, a multi-stage Venture Capital firm that invests or co-invests in and works with pioneering companies to expand their business footprint globally.

City of Houston

Marsha Murray

Marsha is the Deputy Director of the Office of Business Opportunity. Marsha directly oversees the following areas in the Office of Business Opportunity, with an indirect oversight of all other areas in the Department: Contract Compliance Division, Certification and Hire Houston First Division and Department Services Unit. Prior to joining the City of Houston in 2012, Marsha served as legal counsel to New York City government for 10 years. Marsha has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Spanish Literature from Colgate University and a Law degree from Villanova University School of Law.

Microsoft

Azam Zaidi

Azam Zaidi is a digital transformation and cloud strategist at Microsoft Corporation responsible for leading digital strategy and business transformation in Manufacturing, Energy, Logistics and Transportation industries via cloud technologies.

VP - Computex

Partner & VP, Computex Technology Solutions

Faisal Bhutto

Faisal Bhutto is an industry veteran with 18 years of information technology and security experience. He serves as the Vice President of Enterprise Networking, Cloud & Cybersecurity at Computex Technology Solutions, one of the nation’s leading Solution Providers. He is responsible for all aspects of Computex’s national Cloud & Managed Services and Cybersecurity business that boast world class Network Operations Centers and Security Operations Centers in Houston and Minneapolis. Faisal has been at the forefront of several technology trends and transitions. In 2002, he was one of the earliest architects and technology visionaries nationwide that saw the TDM PBX transition to VoIP and deployed the first production Cisco Unified Communications environment in the State of Texas. He then capitalized on the multi tenancy capabilities of that platform and built Hosted Voice Services for companies of all sizes to take advantage of this revolutionary enterprise technology trend further building a Managed Services powerhouse, ENETsolutions. After a successful acquisition by Computex, Faisal now has the charter to grow the next generation cloud & cybersecurity solutions and help Computex’s customers navigate the complexities of these technology areas. Faisal holds a B.S. in Mathematics and completed his Masters in Business Administration summa cum laude from University of Houston. In addition, he holds the industry’s most prestigious CCIE certification. He also serves on several technology boards including the Global Technology Advisory board for Cisco.

Weatherford

Farhana Janmohamed

Farhana is a Director of Global Business Support at Weatherford. Her close to 20 year career in energy industry finance roles also include companies like BHP Billiton and Montana Albert Tie Ltd.

Director - AT&T

Nadia Morris

Nadia Morris is Head of Innovation at the AT&T Connected Health Foundry in Houston, TX , an innovation center focusing on digital health technologies by working with start-ups, and established companies. Her team is collocated at the Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute. They have access to design, technical, and business resources to move ideas from concept to commercialization in a collaborative, fast-paced environment.

Nadia has been awarded over 50 US patents, covering areas such as network security, streaming video, network connected drones, and software development. She earned her degree in Philosophy from Georgia Southern University focusing on Artificial Intelligence.

Founder and CEO - PAS

Eddie Habibi

Eddie Habibi is the Founder and CEO of PAS, a Houston-based software company that provides process safety, cybersecurity, and asset reliability solutions for global energy, chemical, and power companies. PAS’s customers include 75% of the top chemical and refining companies.

Eddie is a pioneer and a thought leader in the fields of industrial control systems (ICS) cybersecurity, Industrial IoT, data analytics, and process safety. He is the co-author of two popular best practices books related to process safety and asset reliability: The Alarm Management Handbook and The High Performance HMI Handbook.

Eddie holds a Computer Engineering degree from the University of Houston and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas.

SURE Program

Dr. Saleha Khumawala

Dr. Khumawala is a Professor of Accounting and the Founding Director SURE Program at the University of Houston.

The SURE Program was launched in Fall 2012 with a mission to enable economic stimulation by serving aspiring local entrepreneurs from underserved communities and Veterans in the Houston area. The program provides free financial and business education, ongoing business consulting and prepares entrepreneurs to access capital.

Energizing Health

Brian Lang

At Energizing Health, Brian works with startups from all over the world and US based healthcare organizations to accelerate healthcare innovation. Begun with a grant from the Kauffman Foundation, Energizing Health solves the problem of how to connect early stage health startups with large, established healthcare organizations. Since its foundation in 2014, Energizing Health has worked with some of the world’s biggest healthcare organizations, with highly recognized thought-leaders, and with some of this era’s most successful health startups.

T-Squared Newsletter

Marc Nathan

Marc is an experienced leader in the technology startup community with a talent for connecting entrepreneurial business owners to customers, employees, investors and partners. Marc founded T-Squared Agency to support select clients with comprehensive growth strategy and funding resources. Throughout his career, Marc has assisted early stage companies with business strategy, capital acquisition, digital and mobile marketing, customer development, strategic partnerships and product development. He publishes the weekly Texas-Squared Startup Newsletter that offers news, opinions and events across the Texas startup ecosystem.

Digital Strategist

Karthik Rajan

Karthik is an advisor to companies and private equity investors in the energy space, with a focus on strategy, trading, analytics to commercial operations. He is currently an advisor to Just Energy, an electricity and natural gas provider with over 2 million customers across the US, Canada, UK and Germany.

He is also a frequent contributer on the Huffington Post and Entrepreneur, and has over 16,000 followers to his LinkedIn articles.

January Advisors

Jeff Reichman

Jeff Reichman is the founder of January Advisors, a consulting firm that works on data and technology projects. He is also the founder of Sketch City, a nonprofit community of 2,000+ people who advance technology and data in public decision making. Jeff serves on the board for the League of Women Voters of the Houston Area, where he leads projects related to issues and advocacy. In 2015, he was named one of Houston’s 40 Under 40 by the Houston Business Journal.

CEO - Prounitas

Adeeb Barqawi

Adeeb is President and CEO of ProUnitas, a non-profit that connect students with wrap-around social services and resources that include early childhood education, healthcare, STEM, literacy, college readiness, financial readiness, academic readiness, workforce development, character development, self-advocacy, arts and music.

Adeeb also spent two years as teacher for Teach for America, where he taught Physics at Kashmere High School. Previously Adeeb was a research scientist at Pfizer and the Institute of Integrstive health.

Dir. of Finance - Texas Children's

James Hury

James assesses business lines and technologies that support the Texas Children’s mission. James’s experiences range from directing and managing medical group practices, developing and executing strategic initiatives, front end revenue enhancement and improving the performance of existing product lines. His primary focus is emerging business opportunities.

Previous to joining Texas Children’s, James was the VP of Operations and Finance for a large radiology practice and president of a wholly owned billing company. While at the radiology practice, James dealt with strategy, new business lines, governance, and revenue cycle management.

He currently teaches Healthcare Finance at the Jones School at Rice University. He is also a member of the Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute Advisor Network

CMO - Seremedi

Dana Abramovitz

Dana is currently Director of MedTech at SXSW. She is passionate about bringing people together to innovate and improve health and healthcare. She has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Columbia University and a Masters in Management with an emphasis on healthcare new ventures from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Previously CMO at Seremedi, Dana leveraged her experience and passion to improve communication between doctors and patients, help hospitals embrace and implement value-based care and ensure that patients achieve the best recovery outcomes possible.

Chief of Staff of Hybrid IT, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Maryam Chaudry

Maryam Chaudry is Chief of Staff to Alain Andreoli, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Hybrid IT. In this role, she works closely with the Hybrid IT Leadership team to ensure the success of the Hybrid IT business.

Maryam has been with Hewlett Packard Enterprise for 11+ years and was previously in the North America Regional Business Unit, where she was most recently leading the pricing and programs team. In particular, she lead the creation and implementation of several Server and Enterprise Group pricing models with a focus on list pricing, street pricing, competitive analysis and positioning, and the channel pricing programs. Under her guidance, transactional pricing revenue increased by $200M annually.

She was also responsible for leading programs in region such as the Transactional Business Model, Go To Market (GTM) competitive programs, and various Intel and AMD initiatives. Prior to that, Maryam held a variety of critical roles at Hewlett-Packard within product management, business strategy/planning, and sales enablement areas.

Maryam hold B.S and M.S degrees from the University of Houston and is actively involved with several non-profit organizations in the Houston area.